Product Description

serial interface information to jump-start projects on several platforms. This it the first book to have extensive on RS-485 , a widely used, industry standard interface for networks. This reference features original content based on the author's firsthand research and experience, not just rewritten specifications and marketing materials. Programmers, engineers and developers will use the designs in this book to get projects up an running quickly. Installation and maintenance staff will find tips for ensuring reliable operation and problem tracking. Students and computer enthusiast can use the book's complete, original examples and tools to design experimental projects for several computer platforms.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #450956 in Books
• Published on: 1998-06
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 306 pages

Test & Measurement World, October 1998
The part of the book I liked most comes in the section that describes how to connect serial devices. Axelson covers not only RS-232 communications but also RS-485, a serial standard that allows for party-line or multi-drop connections. You would spend a lot of time looking for all the information that the book collects in one place. If you plan to use a serial port in any sort of application, buy this book. It should go on your bookshelf alongside Axelson's earlier book, Parallel Port Complete.

Nuts & Volts, Sept '98
Serial Port Complete is an accurate title. This book covers everything you'd ever want to know about serial ports and network projects. And it's not all theory. This is a very practical book, full of detailed examples - including Stamps and Visual Basic. This book is a "must-have" for serious experimenters.

Industrial & Control Systems, October 1998
Anyone who wants to build equipment and connect it to a computer will need the information covered here. It covers everything from the basic electrical and physical parameters, cables, and basic architecture to programming for PCs and microcomputers.

Customer Reviews

Easy to understand for this beginner to serial communications!
I read all the reviews I could find before buying this book, and they lead me to believe that I could find the help I needed to write a small program to control a bank of DVD players via RS232. Needless to say, this book gave me a lot of VERY useful serial bus information, especially on the "MSComm" Visual Basic serial port control. Chapter 4 gave me all the tips and hints I needed to "hack" together a first-draft application in under a day's work of coding!

Wasn't that helpful ...
The examples in this book were too advanced for the project I was working on. In the end it was just a waste of time. I wish I'd spent my money on a book more suitible to my needs. Nuff said.

A Very Good Start and Maybe As Far as YOU need to go
You would think that as long as the RS-232 serial port has been around that every engineer would know all about it. But that's simply not true. People are still out there interfacing all manner of equipment using a serial interface.

In the Serical Port Complete you will find just about everything you need to know about interfacing to and programming for a serial port. Note that I say 'just about' everything you need to know, that's because who knows what you'll really be planning to do. Suffice to say that this is an introductory book. It assumes that you have little knowledge of PC's, a little knowledge of electronics. From there it tells you how to interface to an outside line using any of several common UARTs, and then how to program your PC to handle the resulting port.

If you are looking for something more complex; current loop or selecting data out of a stream, then I recommend you start here before going on the more complex literature. The programming in this book is illustrated using Visual Basic. If you work in some other language such as C++, it will not be difficult to convert.